designSTUDIOmodern

demolition man

The addition at Ave F has started up in earnest, finally. Materials are on the ground, demo has started, and some final details are getting wrapped up on the studio. All in all it's been a productive week. Having a new crew on site has really kicked things into gear.

4"x2" "horse panel" has been installed at the deck handrails as well as the first run of stairs and the landing. This material, where installed at the lower run of stairs will support the existing passion flower vine that dominates the fence to the north side of the lot. In a year or two the entire space between the studio and the house addition will be a lush oasis of tropical vines and weird flowers.

Since the clients are going to be living in the house while the construction is ongoing, we've been coordinating the material deliveries so that we have most of what we need on site as we need it. We've taken delivery of the wall panels (the same ones used in the studio), the glulam beams and columns (which make up the framing for the wall of glass tot he south of the addition), the floor trusses that span between the existing peir and beam and the living room slab, and the other miscellaneous framing material required to get the shell of the addition up as soon as we can after demolition is complete. Needless to say there is considerable logistics involved in all of this, espaecially taking into account the fact that all of the services for the existing house are located in the one room we are demolishing down to the ground. Tricky to say the least...

Intermission: Art

Two photos that give me much pleasure.

   

Cock Sky (2008)                                                        No Ass (2008)

Signed and framed limited edition archival prints (18"x27") available.
$400/each or $700/pair

Contact Mark Meyer if interested.

from garage to art studio

Garages are often the spaces where we feel most comfortable getting creative and productive. Their open spaces, large expanses of wall, utilitarian concrete floors and convenient large openings allow for all sorts of uses other than to just protect our cars (and our other important possessions, commonly known as "junk".)

Our client for this small project (an prominent artist that focuses mostly on oil paintings) desired to clean out her rather plain garage and turn it into a full fledged painting studio and gallery space.

It was decided to remove the existing cheap overhead garage door and replace it with two large steel and Polygal sliding barn doors instead.

This replacement not only allowed for the removal of the standard overhead tracks and opener hardware that cluttered the otherwise smooth expanse of the ceiling, but also offered up the opportunity to let in significant amounts of diffuse North light, always in demand by painters and scupltors.

After we tweak and adjust how the panels hang and slide along the track we'll install Pemko brush gaskets along the head, jambs and sills to keep the critters and air infiltration to a minimum.

colour, pattern, and rhythm

Colour, pattern and rhythm have been a constant interest in the work of designSTUDIO. We are currently composing different colour and material palettes for various projects and are taking cues from past work. There has been an ongoing interest in different siding approches working with different colours and patterns of vertical metal siding. The most recent iteration of this was in a studio addition for a Grammy winning musician living in a simple Mid-Century builder ranch (another thread that runs through our work). In that siding a four-colour pattern, based on the chord progression of "If the House is a Rockin" marches around the building. The siding and colours are all standard issue CF-Panel "Snap-Lock" roofing materials from Mueller Metal Buildings.

 

To take those ideas in a different direction we are now working with a horizontal lap siding pattern composed of three widths and corresponding colours. This pattern makes for a "randomized" look as blocks of the same width of siding intersperse around the building. In reality there is a total of four block patterns (two of which are simply inverted arrangements of the previous two patterns). The overall pattern is determined by an interweaving of 4", 6" and 8" exposures of Hardi-Panel lap siding. By assigning different colours to each width, a vast array of looks and feels can be accomplished through modest means.

This one feels a bit masculine and protected.

This one vibrant and open.

And this one subdued.

shower power

lightBOX is moving forward, though most of what has been going on is all behind the scenes paperwork. Materials are on their way for the construction of the house addition. The Ultra Frame wall panels from Transcon Steel should show up next week, our floor trusses and the glulam framing package will come soon after. We are also awaiting a big package from Timberlinx that will be full of all of the mechanical fasteners we'll be using to put together the exposed wall of glulam framing and then we can jump into the bit of demo on the existing house to make way for the addition. It should get really interesting really soon. Lots to do and lots to think about and lots to get ready for. The big push is on.

Over at the carport/studio, most of the exterior paint is in place. It makes a huge difference to the finished look of the place just by covering up the "primer red" of the steel and the weld joints. The colour is a wonderful dark purple-y grey. It works well with the white carport ceiling along with the grey of the metal siding. The handrails and stair structure are all to be the same colour as well. It should look great against the wood slats that will screen the top run of stairs.

 

The bathroom is awaiting a full width 2' tall mirror that will sit atop the tile above the sink,with a horizontal cabinet above that. That will mean that the simple circular IKEA wall fixture will sit atop the mirror. We'll also switch out the exposed PVC plumbing all plumbers seem to want to install with a good old-fashioned chrome P-trap.

 

midCENTURY Addition

A non-descript builder ranch house in a close-in South Austin neighbourhood gets a decidedly modern living room addition and a minor interior update. Taking direct cues from 50's modern designs and the existing wood framed carport, the glassed-in room spreads into the spacious backyard with a new foundation and steel framed pavilion.

Serving as a temperate weather living-room, finely attuned to the elements, large custom steel and insulated glass barn-doors roll back to open the corner of the space to the outdoors. Generous 4' overhangs protect the glass walls from mid-day heat, while the clerestory windows of the new dining area open to allow for passive ventilation.

A modest light-filled 3/4 bath does double duty as a laundry room and serves as a solid back-drop for the new top-lit dining area adjacent to the existing vintage kitchen and its stained mahogony ply cabinets. A new ovesized steel and glass pocket door opens up the brick wall around the existing back door to allow for easy entertaining and connection to the new social spaces.

The existing living room vaults up to the underside of the existing roof and allows for a new bank of North-facing clerestories to bring much needed light to the original living area of the house. The small existing bar gets shifted and expanded to a proper sized bar at the center of the new layout.

What was a rather tidy functional home in untouched condition, the simple box gets re-worked into an ambitious re-imagining and distillation of the mid-century vocabulary and in so doing, changes the way the home responds to it's direct surroundings. No longer a passive container for living, the home becomes an active participant in the life of the owner through its registering of light and shadow and its direct responses to the overall climate through the opening up of its glass walls.

Download Floor Plan PDF

why do they call it plumbing when it is really all about being slightly out of level?

Lots of things have been going on in and around the lightBOX studio project. While the full wall and floor tile of the bathroom has been ongoing, the electrical service and fixture installation has been wrapped up and the plumbing service and waste lines have been placed into the ground.

In order to get to that point we've hung all the sheetrock, taped and floated,  primed the walls, hung and hooked up the mini-split unit HVAC and set the laminate floor. The place is really starting to shape up and feel like a finished space.

Sheetrock hanging was a straightforward affair. There were some corner details that needed some attention but by and large everything was hung in a short day. After we had a third-party inspector come by over the weekend to give us our wallboard inspection, we taped and floated the next Monday.

Wall tile was started in the bathroom as soon as the sheetrock was hung above the 4' height behind the sink. The sink is a great IKEA sink, Hollviken, that we decided to wall mount rather than have it sit on a cabinet. This decision mostly had to do with the fact that we have no distinct separation of the shower from the rest of the room based on our space constraints. To this end we fabbed up a cantilevered steel support that is framed into the wall studs to create a nice cantilevered effect for the porcelain sink. Everyone is happy with how this is turning out, as it makes for a very clean and uncluttered space.

White 3x6 subway tile in a vertical stacked pattern runs to a 4' level at the sink and toilet wall and to the ceiling on the other two walls of the space.

Due to a few orphan black tiles that made their way into the boxes of tile have given us license to scatter a few more throughout the room.

The most important portion of the work that has been ongoing has to do with getting the space hooked up to city utilities. The electricians have built the service on the exterior of the building and the plumbers have put in a lift station so we can pump the waste to the very shallowly located city sewer main at the street.

The electrical service is composed of a 200 amp service panel that serves the studio as well as the future sub-panel that will be located on the house/addition, the City Utility's meter can, and the weather-head where the city electrical drop attaches to the building.

The plumbing service included running the waste line all the way out to the street and tying into the existing yard-line, installing a lift station (tank, pump, and alarm) right beside the downstairs storage/utility room, and laying the water line from the existing house.

The shallow city sewer main at the street caught us a bit off gaurd, and having the lift station virtually fill the set-back has forced our hand to seek permission from the inspector to use an electric water heater, and cramped downstairs storage/utility room have made us seek out an efficient tankless heater. We prefer to use a gas water heater, and preferably a tankless one, but we were going to have a bear of a time getting a gas line run back to the studio. Thankfully the city inspector understood our plight and our obvious desire to make this place efficient, and has granted us permission to use an electric tankless water heater. We've settled on the Steibel Eltron Tempra20. It looks and feels like a very high quality German product and we can't wait to get it installed to see how well it performs.

Bathroom

Work has been under way on the tiled bathroom and a few other interior issues. The bathroom area is a simple european styled shower/toilet/sink layout with a shallow curbless shower pan integral to the tiled floor. The two adjacent shower walls are to be tiled to the ceiling, with the other wall behind the toilet and sink tiled to 4', with mirror and shelving above.

The bathroom finish out began with bumping up the floor sheathing thickness with plywood and backer board to allow for the required 1/4" per foot slope to the drain in the 3'x 6' shower pan; in our case an additional 1 1/8" above the subfloor. We then built out a sloped dry-packed mud shower base, over which we applied a continuous waterproofing membrane by Noble, NobleSeal TS. This provides a thin waterproof substrate overwhich we can directly apply thinset mortar and the 2x2 ceramic tile.

 

Once the shower pan liner is installed the 15# tar paper moisture barrier is installed prior to the application of the Hardi-Backer, over which will be installed the 3x6 subway tile.

On the short wing wall between the kitchenette and the bathroom was installed a plywood pantry shelf. A 3/4" birch plywood box with a red-lacquered back, finished with Watco Danish Oil, fit within the stud bay. The 6' tall by 6" deep pantry has one fixed shelf and a series of peg-holes for moveable shelves above. This tiny but incredibly useful pantry will serve the kitchenette with easily accessible storage.

The mini-split AC unit was also finalized and hooked up to the exterior condenser. It should provide ample cooling and heat for the 180 s.f. interior space.

casitaMOD

designSTUDIO has slowly but surely been plugging along on some modular designs over the past few years. Last year we teamed up with start-up modular company ClearSpace Modular and will soon be going live with some modular designs that will be aimed squarely at the segment of the modern modular market that we feel keeps being overlooked, namely the affordable end.

We have decidedly taken a more mid-century approach to the designs and overall ethos of the line. Floor plans are smaller, a typical 3/2 within a 1200 s.f. floor plan, much like what our grandparents would have been used to (though in our case the whole family doesn't have to share a single bathroom!) and overall materiality and detailing are more in keeping with the simple material palettes of that era. We are also maximizing the connections to the exterior with large expanses of sliding doors, unlike most standard modular offerings.

Once we feel like we have the fine-print of the product lines finalized we'll surely post the designs and particulars as well as link to the dedicated web-site for the line. Until then, we wanted to share a little project that sprung almost fully formed from the work we were doing with the modular line. It is informed by what we've learned working on the modular line, and will serve as the smallest member of the modular family.

Conceived as a stand-alone mini-efficiency for remote sites and more temporary stays, the CasitaSpace is a 420 s.f. module with an integrated 8' covered deck and entry porch. The overall idea is that the space is a vessel to view the landscape through. Dark and protected, it is set up to frame a landscape view, and offers up protection from the elements as well as a gracious interior space within which to feel protected and secure. In that sense it is an updated "cave", though with a lot more amenity than merely protection from the elements and a protected view out.

Along one long wall are located the 3/4 bathroom, the kitchen, and on the exterior deck, a utility/storage area. A nook adjacent to the entry door can house a murphy bed, built-in work area, or storage/display wall. A small platform above the bathroom area can serve as a single sleeping platform up in the top of the overall space or as storage.

 
A small entry is carved out of the front corner of the space, to allow for a protected deck that steps down to the ground. A floor to ceiling translucent window on the end of the shower wall casts even light into the tiled bathroom space.

Tiny windows and skylights, pushed to the corners, as well as a floor to ceiling screened window at the entry, allow for gentle reflected light to infuse the space, all the while acting as a foil for the larger view out the end wall and across the covered exterior deck.

For additional info contact Mark Meyer at designSTUDIO.

Progress report

Thanks to many different issues conspiring against a timely build (cashflow, lack of help, disappearing subs, etc., etc.) things have been creeping along at the lightBOX project. Even so, things have been getting done. The biggest bit of progress has been made on the exterior steel stairs and handrails.

We started by laying out and pouring the concrete foundations for the landing and the bottom step. Four 8" sono-tube footings anchor the landing and a 3'x 12" bottom step anchors the lower stringers.

Next came setting the steel structure for the landing, which was fabbed up in the shop and then bolted to the concrete footings.

We then started fabbing up the landing platform and the stringers in our shop. The stringers are composed of 4" structural channels with 2"x 1/4" hairpin steel risers that will support the treads. The hairpin risers were cold bent using a classic Hossfeld Universal Bender. After 2 hours of getting the bends jigged up right, the 48 seperate pieces were bent in about 15 minutes. You got to love mechanical advantage.

We then did a full scale layout, figuring out the proper riser spacing by laying out the as-built measurements of the landings and existing structure at full scale on the shop floor. This allowed us to get everything just right in the shop, so that everything fit perfectly when installed on site.

After installing the landing and stringers, came the installation of the handrail panels. These too were fabbed in the shop, based on full scale layouts of the as-built condition. Composed of 1 1/2" square tubing, they will eventually be infilled with welded wire mesh and sections of wood slats.